Don't Hold Me Back by Winfred Rembert My Life and Art

Winfred Rembert grew up in the 1950s in rural Georgia as the child of sharecroppers whose lives were little better than slavery. As a young man, he was nearly lynched, and served seven years in jail and on a chain gang. Yet he constantly found ways to create, to invent, to uplift. As a child, he made toys from pieces of junk at the town dump. In prison, he watched a leather worker and learned to carve and paint the leather himself. Now, in his own voice and through his powerful paintings, he shares with a new generation of young people his story and his passionate commitment to self-improvement.Reminiscent of the work of Jacob Lawrence and Horace Pippin, the paintings? rich, deep colors and poignant details powerfully narrate a story of personal courage and exceptional talent. At the same time, Rembert shows how the civil rights movement was not just a matter of famous speechs and marches, but was a product of the bonds of the black community and the unbreakable spirit of individuals

Unrated Critic Reviews for Don't Hold Me Back

Kirkus Reviews

The story of Rembert’s life and late-developing artistic career is most significant as a first-person account of the racism still faced by African-Americans nearly 100 years after the abolishment of slavery.

Publishers Weekly

His narrative style is fresh and colloquial, e.g., of working long days in the cotton fields, he writes that he labored " 'from can't to can't'—you go when you can't see and you come back when you can't see."